1. Field of the Invention
The invention pertains to the field of hot beverage containers. More particularly, the invention pertains to hot beverage containers that cool the liquid prior to consumption.
2. Description of Related Art
When I have made hot coffee, hot chocolate, or hot tea in the past I have always been annoyed that I had to wait several minutes until my beverage cools down. What should be a pleasant experience is marred by the need to take scalding test sips, or alternatively risk waiting too long and resulting in cold coffee. Having found no reusable mugs with such features, I was challenged to find a way to both keep the beverage hot, yet still allow for comfortable drinking immediately.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,488,173, 6,471,085, 6,318,584, 6,176,390, 5,964,379, 5,961,004, and 5,253,780 display methods of cooling a hot beverage by separating a portion of a hot beverage into cooling chambers where the beverage cools at a more rapid pace. These methods do not allow for immediate and continuous consumption allowed by my invention. Furthermore, they are significantly more complex and expensive to use or manufacture, two of them even incorporating valve systems.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,021,490, D360,558, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,054,631, 5,005,717, 4,830,204, D279,250, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,442,948, 4,428,490, D269,659, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,291,814, 3,332,567, 2,885,134, and 2,013,475 display combinations of straws and drinking vessels. However, these designs suffer from one or more of the following deficiencies: lack sufficient straw length to cool a liquid, the tubes are not designed to maximize cooling, the tubes are permanently enclosed making cleaning impractical, require disassembly to clean, the tubes are arranged in vertical loops requiring additional sucking before beverage is consumed, and are not designed to hold hot beverages.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,442,948 is similar to an embodiment of my invention, but does not allow cleaning without disassembly. The articles described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,442,948 require removal of the inner cup to expose the tubing for cleaning, which in addition to being an extra step, adds risk of losing a piece and rendering the whole mug useless.